July 21, 2011. Copyright 2011, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Actor Robin Williams, whose stand-up routines paved his way into Hollywood, turns 60
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, July 21, Graphic News:  He is nothing if not versatile. Famous for ad-libbing and improvisation, Chicago-born Robin Williams was told by his tutor John Houseman, at the New York stage school, Julliard, to quit his theatre course and exploit his natural talent for stand-up. He stayed on and graduated, but afterwards took the advice of the celebrated teacher and hit the nightclubs, cultivating his particular style of rapid-fire monologues, peppered with impressions and cross-cultural references, which have featured many times since in his best-known films. From his latex-suited nanny in the eponymous Mrs Doubtfire (1993), to the unorthodox army DJ of Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Williams has been able to showcase his highly vocal and physical comedic skills, while more serious roles in the likes of the medical drama Awakenings (1990), the public school tragedy Dead Poets Society (1989) and his Oscar-winner, Good Will Hunting (1997), have proved he is more than just a fast-talking funny man.
 
Williams won his first big break portraying the alien, Mork from Ork, in the long-running American sitcom, Happy Days, having been spotted by the show's creator while still on the club circuit. From a single appearance in 1978, an entire spin-off series -- Mork and Mindy -- was developed and ran for four years, picking up a Golden Globe award for Williams as Best Actor in a Television Series, in 1979. It was during this period that, Williams has admitted, he became addicted to cocaine, a habit he abandoned after the drug-related death of his friend and fellow actor, John Belushi, in 1982. Williams was one of the last to see Belushi alive, having visited him in his hotel room on Sunset Boulevard, the night he died. He has also battled alcoholism, entering rehab as recently as five years ago and, in 2009, he underwent open heart surgery to replace his aortic valve. He was a close friend of Superman actor, the late Christopher Reeve.
 
Politically a Democrat, who spoke out against America's involvement in Iraq, Williams was, nonetheless, dubbed the next Bob Hope after entertaining U.S. troops on four separate Middle East tours. And this year he has drawn rave reviews for his performance in a Broadway play set in the ruined Iraqi capital, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Twice wed -- both marriages ending in divorce -- Williams owns a home with a vineyard in Northern California, allowing him to quip: "I love the smell of Napa in the morning," as well as a house in the Seacliff area of San Francisco, the city his family moved to when he was a teenager. He traces the roots of his career to a lonely boyhood where, as an overweight child, he entertained himself by inventing different voices. "You're only given one little spark of madness," he has said. "You mustn't lose it."
/ENDS